You are Known & Loved

Oct. 27, 2019

JRCC

Galatians: Freedom through Christ

 "You are Known & Loved" 

How amazing to be in the fold of our loving God.

• When Sylvia and I were planning to bring kids into our fold, something surprising happened in me.
• I had always wanted and assumed I would have kids.
• But when the time came, I was caught off-guard by a rising doubt within me related to bringing a child into my fold.
• I really wrestled with how I would love my child.
  • As in what would the quality of my love be like?
  • What kind of love would I have for my child?
    • Would my love be big enough?
    • Would my love be good enough?
    • Would my love be everything this child would need to grow up healthy and secure?

• Our kids are 13 and 15 years old, and you know what I have learned in these years…
• The insecurity about my love as a father bringing a child into my fold, was rooted in my insecurity about God’s love for me.
  • The reason I wasn’t sure about the quality of my love for my child, was because I wasn’t sure about God’s love for his child … me.

So let me ask you, “Do you know that God loves you?” (pause)

• Are you completely convinced that God loves you?
• I am not asking if you know that God loves people … as in the whole world … that’s easy.
• I am asking, “Do you know that God loves Savana, Jared, Muriel, Bob, Roger, Sara?”
• Are you convinced that if an angel in heaven would approach God right now and say, “God, do you love Al?”
  • …that God would respond, “Oh, Al Thiessen, I know Al, I love him!”

• Are you secure in God’s love for you?
  • Because if you aren’t, it’s going to negatively affect every relationship you have.
  • You are going to spend your time trying to earn God’s love and you’re going to project that void onto others.
• The last thing I want my kids to believe is that somehow they need to earn my love.
• But out of my insecurity, I know that I can convey that message to them … and it’s rooted in my belief that I somehow need to earn God’s love.
• And that, is one of the most insidious lies of the devil.

Turn with me to Galatians 4…

• In Galatians 3, the Apostle Paul talks about the relationship that people had with God before Jesus arrived on the scene.
• The OT law was the way that humanity related to God.
• The life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s Son, redefined our relationship with God.
• Starting in Galatians 3:24, Paul says,

^3:24 The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. ²⁵ And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. ²⁶ For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

So we have a new relationship with God through Jesus… but the Galatians are getting cold feet in this new relationship.

• They are insecure about God’s love for them … and in their doubt they want to go back to the old relationship and try to earn God’s favour/love… prove themselves to God.
• But in Galatians 3, Paul says we don’t need the Law to be in a relationship with God.
• And he continues in Galatians 4,

¹ Think of it this way. If a father dies and leaves an inheritance for his young children, those children are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they actually own everything their father had. ² They have to obey their guardians until they reach whatever age their father set. ³ And that’s the way it was with us before Christ came. We were like children; we were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world.

⁴ But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. ⁵ God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. ⁶ And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” ⁷ Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.

⁸ Before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves to so-called gods that do not even exist. ⁹ So now that you know God (or should I say, now that God knows you), why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual principles of this world? ¹⁰ You are trying to earn favor with God by observing certain days or months or seasons or years. ¹¹ I fear for you. Perhaps all my hard work with you was for nothing.

In the 1^st century, children where considered to be about the same value as slaves/servants in a household.

• Servants/slaves and kids were partnered together.
• And if a father passed away before his child was an adult, the head male slave would become guardian of the kid until the age the father set for him to receive his inheritance.
• The role of the guardian/slave was to serve the Dad by getting the child ready… helping this kid grow up and become a worthy recipient of the Dad’s inheritance.
• In the sense that they both took their orders from the Dad, the kid and the guardian/slave were the same … they were subservient.
• In fact, the child had to take orders from the guardian/slave … so in some ways, Paul says in 4:2, he was below the slave.

But then, the child grows up and everything changes.

• At a certain age, he and the guardian/the slave, separate and there’s a distinction…
• The son gets an inheritance and is rich, but the slave is still poor.
• The son is free, but the slave remains a slave.
• And Paul is saying to the Galatians, you used to be like this child, enslaved, before you were given the grace of God … before Christ bought you out from under the Law.
• “But now (vs. 4) you are free because Jesus Christ has bought your freedom and (vs. 5) God has adopted you as his very own children…
• You don’t call God master any more; you call him Dad.
• 7… and as a child, you are an heir of God the Father.

The new truth is that we are children of a God who loves us!

• A God who loves us and adopts as his very own, which entitles us to receive his inheritance.
• Do you believe that?
• Are you secure in that?
• Say these words out loud, “God loves me.”
• Now again, with your name at the end, “God loves me, Wally”

Now acknowledge if you hear any of these words in your spirit: “but” “accept” “not really” “well sort of” “maybe”.

• For some of us, it’s easier to believe that I am a servant/slave of God, than a child of God.
• We believe that there’s something wrong with me that I need to make up for, so that God will love me.

Say it again, “God loves me.”

• The truth needs repeated reinforcing to permeate my broken thinking, my pain, my abuse, my wrestling, my striving…

• If you’re not willing to accept the truth, then you are going to leave here today and resume your pursuit of security in something else … success, money, grades, sex…

• If you don’t believe that God loves you and that you are an heir of everything that is God’s … then you are going to pursue being an heir of the things the world offers you.

Think about what’s consuming your attention?

• What’s out there, waiting for you, that you can’t stop thinking about?
• It’s an indicator that God is not your Shepherd, because when God is my shepherd … what?
  • “I shall not want … I shall not have need” (Ps.23)
• When the Lord is my shepherd, the table is set and it’s full of his good gifts, even though there are enemies all around me.
• I sit down as a child/heir of God and nothing around me matters, because I am consumed by his love for me.
• I am in such an intimate relationship with God…

Look at Galatians 4:6,

God sent the Spirit of his Son, Jesus into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.”

• Do you know those times when it’s just about you and God and as vs. 6 says, your spirit calls out, “Dad!”
• …it’s an intimate, excited, vulnerable relating to God … because you know that your Father in heaven loves you!
• Do you have those times when you are overwhelmed by God’s love for you?
  • “Oh, I remember having that when I first met Jesus … but that was a while ago.”
• So what’s consuming you now and taking you away from that?
  • Busyness, cell phones, deadlines, messages, social media saying, “look at me instead”…
  • What’s distracting you or enticing you away from God and his love for you?

When you are intentional toward God, you are cultivating your security in his love for you.

• Intimacy with God leads to security. (repeat)
• But Satan wants us to be in a whirlwind of busyness and a downward spiral of pursuit that feeds itself…
• We just keep trying to fill a void in us, but the void gets bigger because the pursuit takes us away from God, not into his presence/his love for us.

Galatians 4:8,

⁸ Before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves to so-called gods that do not even exist. ⁹ So now that you know God (or should I say, now that God knows you), why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual principles of this world? ¹⁰ You are trying to earn favor with God by observing certain days or months or seasons or years. ¹¹ I fear for you. Perhaps all my hard work with you was for nothing.

• “You’ve gone back to acting the same way you were before you met Jesus.
• You are sons/daughters of God and now you want to go back and to being a slave?!”
• Look again at verses 8 & 9,

“before you knew God” … “now that you know God”

• Two different words being used for “know”
  • You know a fact or piece of information (Spanish: saber)
    • “You know I have short hair”
  • You meet/know someone and you get them … there’s a connection/relationship (Spanish: conocer)
    • “You think you know me? You don’t KNOW me!”
  • Paul is saying that in the beginning, you didn’t even know … you didn’t even have the facts on God.
  • But now, Paul says, you KNOW God … you are in a relationship that goes way beyond the facts.
  • Now you have intellectual understanding AND a relational/intimate knowing of God.

But then it gets even better, because Paul says in vs. 9,

“or should I say, now that God knows you” … you are known by God!

• Can we pause and just let that sink in… because there is a difference between knowing God and God knowing me…
  • Almighty God, Creator, King saying, “I know Wally Nickel”
  • Have you ever meditated on that fact, “I am known.”
  • If you were to ask God about me, he would say,

“Oh, I know Wally … I love him.”

• If you leave here today with only one word from Galatians 4, make it the word, “known”.

Take the word, “known” with you; it belongs to you… “I am known by God!”

• Anyone can say, “I know about God.”
• But how good is it to be able to say, “I am known by God”!
• He doesn’t just know about me as 1 in 7.7 billion.
• He doesn’t just have me on a “naughty or nice” list.
• God KNOWS me and he LOVES me.

Friends, let’s remember that the Galatians are trying to obey the commands of the Bible so that they can win the favor of God.

• They are doing a lot of “good” things...
• But Paul is saying it won’t work,

“⁹ …why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual principles of this world? ¹⁰ You are trying to earn favor with God by observing certain days or months or seasons or years.

• You have new facts about God, but if you use this knowledge to earn favor with God, then you’re actually submitting yourselves to the “spiritual principles of this world.”
• And in Eph. 6 and other places in Scripture we know that the principles of this world are the principles of Satan.

This is harsh teaching/truth … can you imagine how the Jewish teachers felt when they heard Paul equating their teaching to that of the devil?

• “Wait, Paul, you’re saying that by trying to follow the OT commands, the Galatians are following demons?!”
• Paul says, “Ya, by the way they are doing it, absolutely.”
  • Because they are following the law trying to earn righteousness.
• Any form of self-righteousness is wrong and evil.
  • Whether you are trying to obey the principles of the Mormon bible to earn the righteousness of God…

…or whether you are trying to obey the principles of the Holy Bible to earn the righteousness of God…

• It’s the same thing and it’s from the devil because it’s a form of self-righteousness.

• Any system where you gain righteousness by your own merit, is of the devil… even if you are using the commands of God’s Scriptures to try to earn your righteousness.
• That’s how cunning/deceptive Satan is…
  • If he can’t get you to disobey the commands of God, then he’ll try to get you to obey the commands of God in a legalistic way … which is just as deadly. (repeat)

If you are coming to church, because you think it’s earning you favor/righteousness with God… stop!

• It will destroy you … that’s Satan’s end game … John 10:10,

¹⁰ The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy…

• We need to stop buying into the temptation that says if you do good things, God will be pleased with you and somehow he’ll put that down in the category of “good enough” to be his child… good enough to get into heaven…
• Every religion that exists is predicated in some form on that system and it’s pure evil.
• Religious systems are based on me obeying commands in order to earn merit with a higher power, to earn righteousness … and ultimately “I” earn heaven or god-like status!
• If that’s true, then who am I believing in?
  • I am believing in myself … that I will be good enough, strong enough, smart enough, obedient enough…
• Show me one place in the Bible that says self-righteousness done well can earn me salvation.

• The temptation starts so subtly, but Paul is saying that it leads to being a slave to the principles of the devil, who’s ultimate goal is to destroy you.
• That’s why Paul is questioning if all the teaching to the Galatians was for nothing … because if they continue down this path, they are as good as dead.

Everything Paul taught them, everything the Bible teaches us is that it’s about believing in God (not myself) and his love for me (not how good I am).

• “God loves you and you can’t do anything to make him love you more.”
• “You are seeking righteousness based on your good works … stop!”
• “God loves you!”

God’s amazing love for me.

• He loves me so much that he provides righteousness for me … something that I can never attain as a sinful human.
• But God says, “I love you so much, Wally, let me give you my righteousness so that we can be together.”
• “Really, God, you would do that for me? What do I need to do?” … see where our human tendency goes to right away.
• God says, “Believe … believe in my love that sent Jesus to the cross to buy you back and make you my child.” John 3:16

Are you secure in God’s love for you?

• Let’s be honest … we have baggage and brokenness in this room … not one of us excluded.
• And it makes it hard, to sit here, to be completely secure, and say, “God loves me.”
• Galatians 4 says, “I am known by God and he chose to adopt me, and that makes me his heir … all because he loves me.”
• When you believe that God sent his Son/Jesus to die for you and buy your freedom from sin … God adopts you as his child and puts his Spirit in you.
• …and we get to KNOW and be KNOWN by God.

• And that has the power to change how you relate, how you work, how you volunteer, how you give, how you parent, how you study, how you play, how you think,

 “God loves, Wally Nickel”

• How amazing is that?!
• Say it with me, “God loves me, _____________.”

 Wow, God knows me, adopted me, and I am an heir to his reward.